


Identify

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anger, Family, Gen, Mentions of Daenerys, Storytelling, joy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 19:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9783095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: Arya went utterly silent as Jon shrugged off his layers and bared his scars for her to see.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it took so long. Hope you guys are liking it.
> 
> Title from the song by The Maine

Jon blinked at Arya. “Tyrion Lannister is Daenerys Targaryen’s hand?”

 

Arya shrugged, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. “And Barristan Selmy—you remember him, Sansa—he is Lord Commander of her queensguard. I think that they must be the reason Daenerys didn’t have me killed the moment I set foot in Meereen; we were never friends with the Targaryens.”

 

“Nor were the Lannisters,” Jon mused. “A Stark, a Lannister, and a Targaryen.”

 

Arya smiled. “Lord Tyrion said that as well.” She sighed. “I have a lot to tell you, and I don’t think you’ll like a lot of it. I…I’ve done some things that aren’t good.”

 

“We’ve all done what we’ve had to do to survive,” Sansa said firmly. “Come on; Jon and I have things to tell you too.” Once they were settled around the fire in what used to be the family room, just off of the main hall, she gestured for Arya to speak. She hesitated, looking down at her hands. She had never been so shy before. Jon wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed reassuringly, and at last Arya took a deep breath and began to speak.

 

“A brother of the Night’s Watch cut my hair after Father was executed and told me to pretend to be a boy,” she began. “His name was Yoren. He was going to take me to Winterfell on the way back to the Wall. He kept me safe, for awhile, him and this other boy, Gendry. He was a smith’s apprentice, quite good, but he was sent away. He never knew why, he’d never done anything. He figured out I was a girl, even when no one else did, and I told him who I was.” She smiled a little. “He would call me Milady when I was being annoying, but he was my friend. Besides you, he’s the one I’ve wondered about most since…” She shook her head and fell silent for a moment.

 

“I knew Yoren,” Jon said. “He was one of the first men I met at the Wall. What—what happened to him?”

 

“He was killed by Lannister men,” Arya told him regretfully. “The rest of us, me, Gendry, a few of the other boys, we were taken captive, to Harrenhal. One of the men there, named Jaqen, had been on the Kingsroad with us, taken from the cells underneath the Red Keep. He told me he would kill any three men I named for saving his life before we were captured.” She swallowed. “Me and Gendry escaped with another boy, Hot Pie he called himself. We were going to Riverrun, because I knew Mother and Robb were there, but we got taken by the Brotherhood Without Banners on the way. They took care of us, they were going to give me to Robb and Mother for a ransom, but Gendry told me he decided to stay and I…” Her eyes filled with angry tears. “I wanted to keep him with me, he was the only friend I had, the only person I trusted, but he wouldn’t come with me. So I ran away and was taken by the Hound.”

 

Sansa couldn’t stop herself. “He’s alive?”

 

Arya shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. I…I was with him for awhile. He took me to Riverrun, but we saw—we arrived in time to see Grey Wind’s head being sewed onto Robb’s body.” She went stone-faced. “The Hound took me to the Eerie, but Aunt Lysa was dead when we got there, and I…I left him, soon after. I left him for dead, after a fight. I shouldn’t have,” she added softly. “I wish I hadn’t now.”

 

Jon squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. “How did you end up in Essos?”

 

“The man who offered to kill for me—who _did_ kill for me—gave me a coin before he left,” Arya explained. “He gave me words to go with it: Valar Morghulis. _All Men Must Die._ I showed it to a man headed to Braavos, asked him to take me to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, but he said he couldn’t go out of his way like that. So I went with him to Braavos, and I joined the Faceless Men, for awhile.”  


“The assassins?” Sansa asked.

 

“Yes.” Arya shook her head. “I wanted to learn how to kill. I wanted to kill Cersei and Joffrey, Illyn Payne, the Mountain, the Boltons, the Freys…so many people, I wanted them dead, and I wanted to do it myself. But the Faceless Men…they only kill who they’re asked to. Jaqen gave me the choice of who I wanted him to kill because I saved him and two others from a fire, back when we were still with the Night’s Watch, and he said I stole three lives from his god, or something. They wanted to make me like them, wanted to make me no one. And I wanted to be no one, but I couldn’t.” She closed her eyes. “I did learn a little though. I know how to be someone else now. I can fight without having to see, and I know who I am. So I left, I ran. They could still be after me—no one leaves them and lives.”

 

Sansa was blinking in disbelief, hardly able to believe the words coming out of her little sister’s mouth. She tried to figure out what to say, but what came out was, “We won’t let them hurt you. No one is ever going to hurt us again.”

 

Arya bit her lip, staring at Sansa, before getting up and rushing to throw her arms around her. “I missed you,” she whispered. “Lord Tyrion told me you’d escaped King’s Landing after Joffrey died, but I thought that you might…”

 

Sansa laughed, a little shakily. “We can talk about me in a little bit,” she promised reluctantly. “Tell us about Daenerys Targaryen.”

 

Arya composed herself with a little shake of her head. “I made my way to Meereen. There were rumours all over Essos about the Dragon Queen and how she had finally had an army. I knew she was going to go to Westeros, so I took a chance. And she was there, with Tyrion Lannister as her Hand. I told them everything that I just told you, and swore fealty to her. She promised me that I would be kept a secret until I declared myself as a Stark, which I have, coming here.” Arya bit her lip again. “She also promised me that, if the people I named still lived after she took Westeros, I would be the one to kill them. Cersei. The Freys. The Boltons. The Mountain. I trained to be an assassin,” she said, “so that’s what I’ll be.”

 

They all fell silent for a long moment, until Jon grinned at Sansa. “I told you that if she wanted to live, she would.”

 

“You aren’t angry with me?” Arya stood up, looking between them both. “I just admitted that I’ve killed people, that I’m willing to kill more.”

 

“You’re alive,” Sansa told her. “That’s the most we could’ve hoped for. You have _always_ fought, Arya, even before everything. And now you’re home. You fought to be here; so did we. You aren’t the only one here who has killed people.”

 

“No, but I am the only one who liked doing it,” she said quietly.

 

Sansa shook her head. “I killed Ramsey Bolton. I watched him as he was torn apart by his own hounds, I listened to him scream. We are all different, Arya. We have all changed.” She took a breath, held her little sister a little closer. “We all did what we had to do to survive.”

 

Jon chuckled bitterly. “And it still wasn’t enough.”

 

Arya narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

 

The following shouts of fury were so like the Arya she remembered that Sansa had to hide a grin, because Jon was admitting that he had died. Until Arya demanded, “Let me see,” and Jon sighed like he’d been expecting it. He slowly shrugged his clothes off until his torso was bared, and any laughter died in Sansa’s throat. She hadn’t seen what had happened, just heard what Jon told her, and it hadn’t been much. There were four deep red scars across his abdomen, the darkest resting just over his heart. Four knives had gone in with the intent to kill her brother, and suddenly anger flared.

 

Arya went utterly silent, hesitantly reaching out and placed her hand over his heart, over the scar. “Who did this?” she asked softly.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Jon said firmly. “They’re gone now.”

 

“Why?” Arya had angry tears in her eyes. “You were the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Was it Wildlings? _Who did this?”_ Her hands balled up into fists at her sides. Jon took her wrists gently and sat her down again, before pulling his shirt back on and sitting next to her.

 

“Do you remember Uncle Benjen?” Arya nodded, and Sansa was puzzled as well. “Do you remember when Father told us he had been made First Ranger of the Night’s Watch? It was a huge honor, a very high position in the Watch. Shortly after I joined, he went missing north of the Wall, and there was an expedition to find him and other Rangers that had gone missing. I was Jeor Mormont’s steward, the Lord Commander at the time. I went with a man from another castle along the Wall to investigate why the Wildlings were gathering in such large numbers. They never had before, unless it was to storm the Wall and attempt to cross.”

 

Sansa frowned. “Tormund said you joined them for a little while.”

 

Jon nodded. “I did, to survive, and hopefully bring back information to Castle Black. But I saw what’s out there. The White Walkers, the Night King, it isn’t just a fairytale. The Wildlings were trying to cross the Wall to escape. Stannis Baratheon is the reason we defeated them later, when I went home, but they were in so much danger. When I became Lord Commander, I brought them south. I fought the army of the dead. Every man, woman, child who dies north of the Wall becomes one of them. I had support from Stannis and his red priestess, and a lot of the brothers. But some of my men…they believed I made the wrong choice.”

 

“They tried to kill you,” Arya said stonily.

 

“They did kill me.”

 

“Then how…” Realization dawned across her face. “I saw the Hound kill a man. Thoros of Myr brought him back to life. You said that Stannis had a red priestess.”

 

“She returned to Castle Black after he lost the battle with the Boltons for Winterfell,” Jon confirmed. “She brought me back to life, but no one can erase the evidence of death.”

 

Arya shook her head. “Beric Dondarrion died five times. There was a scar for every one, and they never faded.” Her anger was fading into something Sansa couldn’t read. “Where is she? The red priestess?”

 

“Gone,” Jon said. “She burned Stannis’ daughter alive before the battle. She burned a little girl, and they still lost. Stannis still died.”

 

They were all silent for a long time, long enough for the fire to begin dying in the hearth. Sansa got up to coax it back into flame, and that’s when Arya spoke. “How did you end up with Jon at Castle Black? I know that you didn’t just meet him here, the Northerners would’ve needed a Stark to rally behind.” She glanced at her half-brother. “You became their king after the battle, after they saw you fight, yes? So why were you with him, Sansa?”

 

Sansa couldn’t look at her. “Petyr Baelish helped me escape King’s Landing after Joffrey’s death. The day of the wedding, actually. We sailed to the Veil, and I posed as his bastard daughter, to everyone except for him and Aunt Lysa. In the hope of putting a Stark back in Winterfell, he married me to Ramsey Bolton, Roose Bolton’s bastard son. He was legitimized by King Tommen. Ramsey was…cruel.”

 

Arya scoffed. “Joffrey was cruel.” But she sounded uncertain, and Sansa knew she was thinking hard. She looked up just as the blood drained from Arya’s face all over again. “What did he do to you?”

 

“He raped me,” she said simply. “He was very interested in my maidenhood, because I had been wed to Tyrion Lannister before everything. But Lord Tyrion never touched me. Ramsey had no such qualms about touching me.” She laughed bitterly. “My function was to be the recognizable daughter of Ned Stark and to provide him with an heir. During the battle with Stannis, Theon and I escaped and were joined by a woman who swore herself to me. Theon left me with her. He said he was going home.”

 

“I met him when I joined Daenerys,” Arya admitted. “He told me you’d escaped, but I didn’t understand what it meant. I should have figured it out, I saw everything Ramsey did to him.”

 

“Is he okay?” Sansa asked, a little anxiously.

 

Arya nodded. “He and his sister are supporting Daenerys’ claim to the Iron Throne as well, and she’s giving them back the Iron Islands.” She paused. “Did you say a woman swore herself to you?” When Sansa nodded, she bit her lip again. “Who is she?”

 

“Brienne of Tarth,” Sansa explained. “She said she’d seen you, before.”

 

“It must have been her,” Arya said softly. “How many women in Westeros dress and fight like knights? She told me she had promised Mother she would look after you and me, but I didn’t believe her.”

 

“Neither did I, at first,” Sansa said reluctantly. “But she has never betrayed me, not like Littlefinger has. I might have died trying to get to the wall if it hadn’t been for her.”

 

Arya went still. “Is he the one who sold you to the Boltons? To _Ramsey?”_

 

She was yelling in rage again for ten minutes before Ser Davos entered the room, sword drawn and looking alarmed. “Forgive me,” he said, once he saw the three of them. “I have not heard a lady scream so since…well, I have never heard a lady scream so.”

 

To Sansa’s utter shock, Arya burst out laughing. “You should hear the Dothraki,” she panted after a moment, eyes shining.

 

Davos relaxed, smiling softly at her. “The Northern lords are waiting in the hall,” he said kindly. “Lady Mormont is formidable, to be sure, but even she cannot keep them patient for much longer, I fear.”

 

They all stood to follow him to the hall, and before Sansa’s eyes, Arya straightened her face, held herself tall, and transformed into…a lady. She wore men’s clothes, but she had allowed Sansa to braid her hair back, and her cheeks were glowing from the laughter and anger combined. She had never known Aunt Lyanna, but for the first time she thought that maybe Arya could be like her after all, from how Father had described her. She was a Northern girl, more of a woman now for all that she had been through.

 

She was a Stark.


End file.
